A Rough-and-Tumble Evolution of the Classic Monster Movie, Pacific Rim Lacks Depth

Rating: 5/10 (6 December 2013)

Knocking out an entire film's worth of back story before the opening credits, Pacific Rim doesn't waste any time in getting to the good stuff: thousand-foot monsters are swapping haymakers with their robotic counterparts inside of ten minutes. If you were expecting anything different, well, I'm not sure why because Pan's Labyrinth this ain't. It's exactly what the promo materials promised: a big-budget SFX sandwich with a dense layer of sci-fi sensibility spread through its guts. Hold the subtlety and nuance.
Fans of the classic monster movie will be, no doubt, tickled to see the evolution of that format (though some of these beasts are so foreign and complex, it's often tough to distinguish up from down amidst the mayhem of a fight scene) but I was somewhat puzzled by its herky-jerk pacing and weird sense of identity. It's a tale that can't choose between serious action and gaudy eccentricity, so it tries to move in both directions without luck. Likewise, I had difficulty looking past the odd jumble of TV stars mashed together at the center of it all, drawn from very different sources and plunked down together in a series of comically mismatched back-and-forths. The action is good, and abundant, but the plot is quite thin and the core characters are all basic caricatures. It's worth a watch, but only as a home theater demo or a simple bit of drunken escapism.